


Alishen

by afterandalasia



Series: Atlantis: The Lost Omegaverse [3]
Category: Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Genre: Alpha Kida Nedakh, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Canon Era, Coda, Established Relationship, F/M, Feeling Unprepared For Parenthood, Het Mpreg, Insecurity, Kida Nedakh Character Study, Kings & Queens, Movie: Atlantis: Milo's Return, Omega Milo Thatch, POV Kida Nedakh, Parent Death, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: It has been fifteen years since Milo and his people came to Atlantis, and the city is slowly but surely rebuilding itself. Kida still struggles with the weight of being Queen and everything that is asked of her, and the pressures have only seemed more intense, and more real, since Milo has become pregnant.  The last thing that she expects, just as the weight is at its heaviest, is for Milo's friends from the surface to return with news that perhaps there are still lingering traces of Atlantis's legacy on the surface world.She cannot leave the questions unanswered, cannot but bring light to the shadows of Atlantis's past. Braving the surface for the first time in nearly nine thousand years, Kida determines to find out what the legacy of Atlantis's past has been - and hopes that she might work out what path her future might take.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is in the same universe as the first two parts of the series, but they ended up going in very different directions. The first fic is a brief coda adapting Atlantis into an A/B/O universe; the second is PWP; this third one turned into a very longform character study of Kida and what she goes through in the second film.
> 
> Unlike the first fic, you don't need to know the second film to understand this one (hopefully). It covers a lot more detail of the plot than the first fic and the first film. I've used a lot of the canon dialogue, with a few changes to take into account the A/B/O and mpreg setting, and a few scenes added likewise. The film largely follows Milo's POV, though, so a lot of Kida's POV here was reconstructed completely.
> 
> Title is the Atlantean for "children".

Finally, after so many centuries, Atlantis is being rebuilt. The light of the crystal, waxing and waning with each day, is like a shadow of the sun that Kida barely remembers from her uttermost youth. It provides light that lets them grow crops again, making them less reliant on the hunting and fishing that was slowly depleting the land around them, and is always enough to make her smile after even the hardest of days. Stones are being lifted, a ‘school’ has been established, and the city looks like more than the slow-decaying ruins of some giant stone animal long ago killed.

And best of all, of course, she has Milo.

The thought of him is enough to bring a smile to Kida’s lips, a rush to her heart, and a reminder to her thoughts of the mating bite safely hidden beneath her _saqem_. She can see him even while flying, his brown hair and pale skin making him stand out a little, his over-excitable words and tendency to lose himself in his descriptions making him stand out rather more.

Smiling, she steers down to a landing not far from where he is currently working in the Throne Room, using the guidance and the sketches in that journal of his to match the correct pieces to the correct statues. She rarely sits upon the throne, still feeling like it is more her father’s place even after these years.

“How fitting!” she says. Milo turns at the sound of her voice, and it is flattering to see the smile that comes so easily to his own lips. “Now the old King need never shed tears again.”

Milo still struggles, sometimes, both with Atlantean customs and with his role as her mate and husband. He’s getting the hang of the clothes, for all his tendency to wear those strange large surface-culture undergarments beneath them, and his language has come on in leaps and bounds. But he has admitted that he can barely fathom the idea of being her _Prince Consort_ , and that he is relieved that Atlantis does not treat its royalty in quite the way that most surface kingdoms do.

Of course, it probably does not help when he is knocked over and enthusiastically licked by a small lava dog.

“Obby!” Milo tries to squirm free. “Come on, come on, show a little respect here…”

She cannot help the twinge of protectiveness in her chest, though, although she knows that the fall will not have hurt him and that Obby means no harm. Still, Kida’s strides grow longer as she crosses to them and removes Obby from Milo’s chest, setting him aside. She extends a hand to her mate, smiling. “You are definitely his favourite.”

“I’m honoured.” Milo clasps her wrist as she takes his, and she pulls him to his feet. Over the years, he has slowly built up the resilience to Atlantean life, the start of muscles and getting used to their physical ways, but now she finds herself treating him as tenderly as ever again. He glances down, and Kida follows his gaze to see Obby at their feet, expression hopeful. “All right,” he says. “ _One_ rock.”

Obby scampers off, and Milo looks after him with a fond, indulgent smile. Kida has to all but force herself to look back to the statue around them, the past made into something to respect and not to mourn.

“The rebuilding is moving so quickly,” she says. “Each day, the city looks more like it did when I was young.”

“I think we only understand a fraction of what the crystal can teach us,” Milo replies, looking at his own. But then he lets it fall, and his smile is just for her. “It's a good thing we've got a lifetime to find out.”

Kida steps forward, and runs a hand along his arm. She can feel the way that he shifts into her touch, and she knows that she softens as well, letting for a moment her role as Atlantis’s Queen cede to her role as Milo’s mate. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and pulls him into an embrace, nuzzling against his neck. His scent is just beginning to change, far more subtle than the large shift in his first few weeks in Atlantis; pregnancy is beginning to change him.

The thought scares her, though to Milo she has only admitted nervousness. She thinks of her father, of what he accomplished and how he failed, and her own complicated feelings about him; she thinks of her mother, taken by the Great Crystal. She is not sure how she can be a parent at all, let alone in less than a year’s time. Without a mate, she had never thought of children, and at least in Atlantis with their long lifespans she did not think she would have to worry for many years, if ever. She could always have chosen a successor from the Council of Eight that her father had appointed, to replace the eight of nine Kings who had perished in Atlantis’s fall.

There is no external sign, yet, although Milo is occasionally grumbling about tiredness and has spent a couple of weeks throwing up about every other day. The change in his smell is probably gradual and slight enough that even their closest friends and advisors have not yet noticed it

She hopes that the next months will be enough for her to get her head around it.

“And I am glad–” she begins, only to be cut off as Obby growls and rears up onto his hind legs. “What is it?”

Her heart pounds in her chest, and she feels the rush of protective anger as she releases Milo. Footsteps sound in the corridor, and even as they both turn to look she catches herself stepping in front of him. One of her ministers runs through the door, two guards at his heels.

“Intruders in the lava tunnels!”

And the moment is lost.

 

 

 

 

 

It is Milo who declares that it is his friends returned, that they are no risk here. She can see the wonder in his face, that they have returned after fifteen years, and is only able to tear her eyes away to admire their new flying machines. She hangs back, and allows Milo to have his reunions with his friends without her lingering at his shoulder; she knows that she was not part of their friendship, that what they had never quite included her.

“Audrey!” Milo scoops her into a hug before both of her feet are even on the ground, and surprise crosses her face.

“Woah! When did you get all omega-touchy?” Laughing, Audrey tries to wriggle out of his hold again.

It has been pleasant, as well, to see Milo growing more comfortable with touch over the years. He will now embrace their friends in greeting, will hold Kida’s hand openly and not look too flustered if she slides an arm around him. But the last few weeks have seen him grow noticeably more open to touch, even seeking it out, and Kida suspects that she knows why. Every instance makes her want to smile and to turn her eyes away at the same time.

Whatever the reason this time, though, Milo hugs Audrey a second time and grins. “Two for flinching.”

Her people are so glad to see them, as well, these strangers who saved their city. Kida restrains herself still, both as the Queen and so as not to take this opportunity from her people or her mate, but watches still with a smile. Mrs. Packard has managed to attract the attention of a couple of alpha males, Sweet and even their pet Mole are surrounded by people, and Vinnie appears to be critiquing the flowers which he has been given.

“Man, I missed you guys,” Milo says. Kida’s smile softens, saddens. She knows that he gave up so much for her. “Is everything okay? Mr. Whitmore?”

Across the plaza, three young women are chasing Mole, and probably not for a reason he would want. Kida raises an eyebrow, following their progress for a moment, then turns her attention back to Milo and his friends.

Audrey just smirks. “Why don't you ask him yourself?”

Kida’s heart leaps into her mouth, and even she cannot restrain herself any longer. She runs down the steps and straight to the one man from the surface that she does not recognise, the one that Milo is looking at in amazement and admiration, and before she can help it she has swept him up into a hug.

“Mr. Whitmore! I have heard so much about you!” She is aware of how unqueenly the words are, but cannot help them, nor the beaming smile on her face as she puts him on the ground again. “You bought Milo to me. I can never thank you enough.”

“Maybe the hugging is an Atlantis thing,” she hears Audrey mutter behind them.

“Like the clothes,” adds Vinnie. “Bet they'd let you get a good tan. Do you reckon the crystal give you a tan?”

Audrey snorts, and punches Vinnie in the arm. She wishes that she knew these people more, hopes that this visit will give her the opportunity.

“You must tell us everything,” Kida continues, taking Whitmore by the hand to escort him into the citadel.

 

 

 

 

 

They do not know how bad their timing is, to bring hew news of the Atlantean machine terrorising the surface, the remnants of her father’s war. She is glad that they have told her, that she has a chance to fix it, but it is like a blade in her gut and a weight on her shoulders; the world seems to dim around her. A war nine thousand years ago, and still it preys upon innocents. Perhaps it is easy, when you immortal, to not realise just how long the effects of your actions may tarry.

Beneath the table, Milo’s hand comes to rest upon her hip, and though she is grateful for his support it aches all the same. His hand is right over the mating bite, and it stings in time with the weight in her chest. She draws a breath, hoping for some courage from his touch, as she meets the eyes or those gathered at her table, who have come so far for her help.

“I feel responsible for what my father did,” she says. “I want to understand his decisions... and I am afraid the answers are not in Atlantis.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Did I ever tell you,” says Milo, “just how much I hate boats?”

He groans again, and clutches his stomach. If Kida could take the pain from him, she would, but she knows that it is not possible. “Several times,” she replies. “With great emphasis.” She strokes Milo's sweaty hair back from his forehead as he lies curled on his side in the bunk. “Do you want some water?”

“No,” he says, squeezing his eyes closed but then opening them again and focussing on the far wall. “I would like some land.”

“I am sorry. I should not have brought you away from Atlantis.” Especially not at such a time. She goes to draw her hand away, eyes drifting to his stomach, but he catches hold of it and presses a kiss to her fingertips.

“Hey,” he says, softly. “it was my decision to come with you, even after Sweet warned me about the boat.”

She runs her fingers over his cheek, along the line of his jaw, one thumb pressing over his lips. “I must do this,” she says, guilt creeping into her voice. If it is truly one of her father’s creations, she is the only one who can be considered responsible, guilty blood running through her veins.

“I know,” says Milo, softly.

She has admitted to him already that she is slowly picking apart her years, finding the right and the wrong in her father's words. It is always hard to accept that a good person can still do bad things, and Kida has more years than even many of her people to unravel. Men might make mistakes, and her father was a man like any other, but he was also a King, and his shadow still falls across them.

Milo’s fingers run gently over the inside of her arm, lingering against her wrist. “You've done amazingly, Kida, these last few years. Moving Atlantis forward, without losing her past and what makes her so beautiful.”

Despite everything, she quirks a smile. “You have been practising those words.”

“Trust me, they sounded even better in Atlantean.”

Finally, she laughs, and sees a flush of relief in his eyes that makes her feel a whole new wave of guilt. She bends to kiss his forehead, breathing in the rich warm scent of _home_ , the only part of Atlantis that she now has with her. Even her clothes have been changed. “I will be back soon,” she promises.

 

 

 

 

 

The ship is so strange. It is hard to tear herself away from Milo at such a time, but Kida cannot help the welling desire – she does not allow it to become desperation – to explore the world around them. Even if that world is, for now, the ship.

She examines the walls, the rivets that hold the metal together, and thinks about how the crystals could imitate and improve upon it. Audrey has shown her around the boiler room, and Kida has drunk in every word, picked out the ones that she did not understand to have Milo explain to her when he is well enough to sit up and discuss things. She has been in the kitchens, to see Cookie arguing with the other cooks there, has asked the name of every plant and fish and spice, and placed it carefully in the great vaults of her memory.

She can feel it now, empty halls just waiting to be filled, concepts waiting to be linked and fires to be reignited. She wonders how she could have lived so long without so much to think about.

The best place, though, is the prow of the ship, where she can feel the damp grey mist on her skin and breath in the saltwater smell. There are waves here, and strong wind, and colder air than ever reaches Atlantis.

Far above, some sort of bird cries out. She wishes that she could see it, or ask what it is.

“Not much of a view, I'm afraid.”

Kida turns to see their doctor, Sweet, approaching her. From what Milo had said of alphas on the surface, she had been wary that he might try to assert his dominance, or go in for some show of force, but he has turned out to be confident in his own strength, quiet and stolid. He would fit in well in Atlantis, and she decided quickly that she likes him.

“It is still something new,” she replies, with a slight shrug. Even just to see so much metal is strange, and interesting, and even now her fingers trace the irregular joint of two bars on the rail that surrounds the ship. “For the first time in eight thousand years.”

“Well, I suppose a vacation would sound good after that long.”

He joins her at the rail, and they lean on it and look out into the mist. It is impossible to see anything, but the air itself enchants Kida still.

“It's good of you to come,” says Sweet. “Not that the others would admit it, but the thought of another of those sea monsters does intimidate.”

“Their purpose was more than intimidation,” she says grimly. “There were other Kingdoms in those days, though they did not have the crystals. My father's machines destroyed them utterly, and only our ruins remained.”

“From what I gather, that was before your time,” replies Sweet, with a knowing look. Milo has always been astounded that, as Queen, Kida has allowed people to be so blunt to her, but she would rather bitter truth than honeyed lies. “Everybody's parents make mistakes. If we were responsible for them all the way back, no way we'd be able to stand under the weight of them.”

“These are not the mistakes of a man. They are the mistakes of a King.” Her fingers curl so tightly around the railing that it hurts. “The crown bears the mistakes, and its wearer must live with that. That is what it is, to be Queen.”

Sweet drums his fingers. “Sounds heavy.”

“It is,” says Kida, voice falling almost to a whisper.

"You'd do that to your child one day?" says Sweet. She does not flinch, does not even blink, at the words. “Expect your successor to take on your mistakes? Because we all make mistakes, you know, it's just that we try our best to make them different ones.”

“I will bear my own mistakes.”

“Don't you think your father would have said the same?”

For that, she does not have an answer. Sweet leaves her to her thoughts, and the cold air, and the unseen birds calling out far above her.

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet finally manages to wrest Milo from his sickness with ginger tea and patience, and he joins them on the deck of the ship once again. His sickness improves, and days pass as he teaches her the names of the birds, talks about different forms of clouds, searches seemingly for anything that he can teach her. But she wants to know it all, about tides and winds and so many things that Atlantis does not have, and it is hard sometimes to hold to her guilt when there is so much to discover.

When it comes back, though, it crashes like a wave.

“Two weeks,” Vinny grumbles, in the bowels of the ship. “Two weeks, we criss-cross the North Sea and get nothing. No squids, no jellyfish, and no lobster from Atlantis.”

“We have to be sure, Vinny,” says Milo, and as Kida steps behind him she brings a hand to rest on the small of his back in gratitude. It would be very easy to feel alone without him to bridge the gap between them.

The fingers of her other hand brush for an instant against the crystal at her throat, worn over the thick _sweater_ they had given her. “What if raising the crystal bought this Leviathan to life? This could all be the fault of Atlantis.”

She does not mean for it to sound as stricken as it does, and it is almost a relief when Audrey interrupts, to say that she is concerned with how it can be fought.

“Y-you know,” says Milo, “I really don’t think it _is_ a Leviathan. The survivor called it the Kraken…”

He draws something from his jacket; a _newspaper_ he had called it. It seemed that so much happened on the surface world that they needed to tell people about it daily, and more than that, that so many people could read that it was possible to spread it by writing it down. Though Kida’s reading of Atlantean was improving, she knows that she has no hope of reading whatever language this is in, and merely looks over Milo’s shoulder at the pictures and the strange script.

“…a legendary Norwegian sea monster,” Milo is continuing, “with arms a quarter mile long. Nothing like what we saw in Atlantis.”

The picture, though, is almost familiar to her. She shakes her head. “But Atlantean inventors always base their designs on real animals, like the giant squid.” The eyes that they have given this creature are too large, and it would never leave the water so fully, but she recognises it all the same. “It may not be a Leviathan, but it could still be an Atlantean war machine.”

Is this how she is to spend her time as Queen? Finally breathing the surface air, seeing somewhere other than Atlantis, only to find herself trapped aboard one vessel and chasing her father’s war machines back and forth across the surface of the world?

The ship judders beneath their feet, and Kida braces for balance, reaching for a weapon that is not at her side. A tentacle uncurls from the water, and for a moment all that she can do is watch in horror, images of the war of her distant childhood flickering and sputtering in her mind. She remembers great machines like this, tearing down buildings, filling the air with screams. Even her father had not been able to hide it all from her. She takes Milo’s arm, not even sure whether she is seeking to protect him or looking for some of that strength which he is always able to give her, and is glad that he shouts orders to the others.

She wishes that she could be their leader, could guide this fight. But it is becoming more and more clear that she does not know these machines, these people, these ways of doing things. It is frustrating, and after so long in command more than a little frightening again.

But she grits her teeth, and steels her nerves. She and Milo climb into one of the small metal pods of boats, only for their boat to crumple, to launch sideways, and to lurch downwards into the sea. It sinks, water spurting in no matter how she tries to tighten the wheel that should protect them, and as Milo babbles to the radio she hauls on the controls in the hope of gaining some reaction. There is none.

Audrey promises that she is coming, but her voice is distant; Kida’s eyes are on the great shape in front of them. This deep in the water, it is only a shadow, but she can see its huge bulk, a great mouth opening up and jagged silver teeth against a huge black throat.

Is this Atlantis’s legacy? Legends and monsters?

But then she blinks, and her vision seems to sharpen. The lines are organic, true, but the teeth are uneven, and the great maw seems too real for even the greatest of Atlantean designs. Relief pours over her as she realises that it is a creature, flesh and blood like any other; even in their darkest days, when the crystals had been at their weakest, Atlanteans had never feared beasts or animals.

Whatever it is, and determined though Kida still is still help defeat it, it is not Atlantean. This is one horror that her father did not cause.

 

 

 

 

 

They make their way to a nearby village, and Kida is torn again between admiring the new things, the new styles of boats and shapes of houses, and seeing the destruction that the creature has wrought. It is the same in the town itself, for all that the fog tries to obscure it.

When Edgar Volgud appears, and brushes Milo aside, anger swells in her chest. She walks up to him, meets him eye-to-eye, but of course she is no Queen here. Beneath the fog, she cannot smell him, but he has the boldness of an old alpha and probably cannot tell what she is either. Her hands itch for a weapon again, but all that she can do is stand firm.

Volgud slips into the fog again, and they take to the inn. Kida can see Milo’s mind working, turning things over; he is the one who knows both Atlantis and the surface world, and it is looking increasingly like this is a matter of the surface alone. The innkeeper offers them hot drinks, and rumours, and a reason for sadness.

“We would leave,” she says, something soft and old in her voice. “But this inn is all we have. It is no place for me to raise my little one…”

She meets Milo’s eyes, and it does not take a mate bond to know that their thoughts are on the child in his belly. Her hands tighten on the mug she holds, against the ache to clutch him to her and vow protection from the world. It would be useless anyway, without knowledge of what she is even trying to protect him from.

She will not have their child grow up in the Atlantis which she has known for so long – dark and fearful and slowly fading from life. There will be light, and written words, and laughter and joy in the streets. But still she wonders if there is more, and still her heart aches to think what monsters might be lurking in the shadows of Atlantis’s power.

 

 

 

 

 

That night, they creep from the house to follow Volgud, only for him to lose them in the fog. There are whispers in the air, in none of the hundreds of tongues which she knows, and she is so caught up in them that she does not notice the change in the ground beneath their feet until it is gone. By the time that they climb back to the surface, they find Volgud trying to declare them dead, and Kida watches him go with fury radiating.

Milo gives her a nod, and steps aside with the innkeeper, softening his posture and his voice in a way that Kida recognises as omega-to-omega. He coaxes the story from her, a bargain struck that the town may continue to exist but trap its people within it.

It sounds achingly familiar.

Even the day does not bring sunlight, and that is familiar as well. They search the shore, and it is Mole who finds the hidden passageway, leading into a deep water-filled cave. They find the cargo of the sunken ship, turned into Volgud’s spoils that he will doubtless treat as supplies for the townsfolk. Her lip curls with anger at the simplicity and the vulgarity of the scheme. The people of the town have trusted him, and he has repaid them like this?

They all watch to see the tentacles rise from the water, swaying around Volgud without ever touching him. It is Milo who makes the suggestions, still, that Volgud is controlling the creature, that his concentration must be broken. There is no such power in the crystals, to bend the minds of men, or at least so far as Kida knows. But his words make sense, and this at least is something that she can do.

Before they know it, Audrey stands alone before the Kraken, seemingly oblivious to the tentacle that wraps around her. Milo launches himself at Volgud, and Kida would stop him but there is no time, Audrey is in the clutches of the creature, and Kida has seen its huge foul mouth herself. She vaults over and climbs along its tentacles, but is thrown aside like all of the others, a toy to such a creature. She drags Audrey from the water, and they all but flee, back to the same small boats that first carried them.

They dodge the tentacles, the missiles, and as Vinny loses control of his thoughts it hits Kida in one blow. She had assumed that it was a human who was the monster here, as she had known it to be, but no, it truly was the animal that was to blame. “It’s not Volgud,” she says. “It’s the Kraken.”

Perhaps she needs more practice, at recognising monsters.

They fire everything that they have, and the squid withers to clouds of boiling light, and it is strange to think that so simple a thing can end such a curse. For an explosion is nothing more than a slice of a blade, in a way, a strike of a weapon rather than a match of wits or planning. A blow, and a violent one.

She is not sure what to think of it all.

 

 

 

 

 

Whitmore’s house is as large as many of the buildings in Atlantis. Milo explains snow to her, and introduces her to snowball fights by throwing one at her when she is distracted. They chase each other through the gardens, laughing like children, until she catches him and pins him to the wall of the house, nosing against his neck and pressing her body to his. She can still smell him, beneath the strange clothes and the strange food and the different foam that he uses to shave on the surface. In return, Milo’s hand comes to rest on her hair, and their bodies melt together for a long, silent moment.

In the end, though, they retire inside, and as the others chatter about dinner and Obby, thoughts of Atlantis overwhelm her again. She sneaks away, looks out of the window over the strange land behind. Every plant, every animal, is so alien to her, and she to them.

There is so much, to the world. But Milo has told her of history, of how much was lost when her father destroyed the other empires and sent Atlantis to the bottom of the sea, all those millennia ago. The world was all but wiped from existence, great nations gone, millions of people killed.

All at her father’s hand, using the power of the crystal.

Milo finds her, of course, and she does not even bother hiding her fears from him. That the power of the crystal has made monsters in the past, and that it draws monsters from the hearts of men. He told her about Rourke. She sees the beauty of the world, and knows that the crystal could destroy it all over again.

“But your people,” he says, and it still pangs that sometimes he says _yours_ instead of _ours_. Not all the time, but sometimes it still slips out. “They’ve regained so much. Could you put them in darkness again?”

She knows what he truly asks. Would she raise their child without the light of the crystal? But it was how she was raised. Perhaps they could raise their child to be stronger than her, to face the power and the challenge of the crystal.

Perhaps Kida was not meant to be the one to bring it back.

She does not have an answer for Milo. Eventually, he takes a seat beside her, and holds her close as they watch the falling snow outside.


	2. Chapter 2

When they finally return to the table, she feels able to smile again, though she is not sure how to react when Whitmore offers them the chance to travel and see more of the world. Kida wants to know more, aches for it, as if eight thousand years of curiosity are bubbling up at once, but somehow she knows that every new land and new face that she sees will weigh upon her more. She wishes that her people could have these opportunities, fears the ones that they already have.

It is Mrs. Packard who interrupts them, explaining that Dr. Sweet has found some strange occurrence and would like their help. Kida knows that she is still gauging what is strange and what is not, and knows as well that it is more than a little of an excuse to remain longer on the surface, but when Dr. Sweet asks for her she goes nonetheless.

The world is so _large_. Kida knows every inch of Atlantis, had found its every secret even when she was a child. Here the weather changes, and the land is different, every place that they go. It is painfully beautiful, and she wonders whether their child will ever see it.

Whether she has the right to keep it from them.

When she arrives, she is struck to her core to be handed an amulet engraved with Atlantean symbols. It has only one letter, _A_ , emblazoned upon it, but she recognises it all the same and it makes her knees feel weak.

There was a time that she would have pinned the man to the wall, bared her teeth and demanded that he tell her what he knows. But that time is gone, had softened before Milo even came into her life, and now is folded away like an old, shameful memory. Instead, they follow McKeane’s words, to his shack, then to the shop of the man named Carnaby.

She finds the guardian there, in clay and not stone, but with the brilliant blue designs on its skin. Her heart races, and she snatches it up, a smile lighting on her face even as Milo talks about modifications to the design. The flimsy green slips of paper are easy to hand over in exchange for it, and she steps away to examine it further, fingers running over the lines.

She remembers, faintly and like dreams, her time as part of the crystal. She remembers rousing the great Guardians from their slumber to stand around the city again, huge stone bodies responding to the movements of her own limbs. The shape is the same, the blue is unmistakeable, but Milo is right that it is subtly different. That only makes her excitement stir more; Atlantis is so small that little has changed in anything in the last nine thousand years – including their art. Whatever has inspired this clay model, it was not only Atlantean.

She holds it to her breast, and hopes for something that she cannot quite wrap words around. Proof, perhaps, that her people have not just left ruins in their wake.

 

 

 

 

 

When Mole attempts to flirt with her in the back of the car, she pushes him away casually. Nobody in Atlantis would dare to address her so, even before she was married and mated, but it does not threaten her. From the corner of her eye, she sees Milo stiffen, and deliberately slides closer to him across the back seat. His arm comes to rest around her shoulders.

Perhaps it is the surface, or perhaps the nearly a month that has passed since they left Atlantis, but she can smell the difference in his scent more strongly than ever. She suspects that Sweet, an alpha and healer both, knows; for the others, she cannot say. With the hand not currently wrapped around the clay guardian, she twines her fingers through Milo’s, and feels him relax a little again.

“Hey,” says Audrey. “Didn’t we just pass that guy?”

They offer the man, Chakashi, a ride. There is something about his voice that Kida recognises, that resonates deep in her bones, and she watches him warily. His eyes linger on the crystal around her neck, and does not seem surprised by Obby. More, he speaks of Crystal Guardian, and there is warning in his voice as well as explanation.

She remembers that tone, as well. There was a time when she used it on outsiders, telling them to leave before letting her spear speak.

The sand overwhelms them. Chakashi’s eyes seem red in the darkness, but something in the glow reminds her of the crystal still.

“There are ancient powers that will make certain our secrets are kept,” he says. His eyes turn to her, and the crystal around her neck sears hot at her breast. “And you, more than anyone, should understand this.”

For the first time since coming to the surface, Kida feels young before him. Young and impetuous, and she remembers those that she has killed, cut down for the protection of her people. For thousands of years, she had not suffered outsiders to live, until she had found Milo that one night, in the darkness, and something in her stony heart had cracked.

She recognises Chakashi’s anger, and his protectiveness. The smell of sand fills her nostrils, and for a moment there is a sort of _nothing_ – she cannot smell Milo’s soft omega scent, Audrey’s calm beta, Sweet’s strong alpha or even her own skin. There is something warm and clear, _crystal_ clear, and she feels it in her bones and her chest as something older even than her wraps around them.

A blink, and he is gone. The sand consumes the car, throws them from the road, and somehow they are at the trading post again. The road of history goes around in circle upon circle, and Kida wonders whether they grow or shrink with time.

Carnaby, reeking of alpha and arrogance, tries to deny them, but Milo recognises the name _Chakashi_ , and Kida can still feel the lingering protective fury dancing on her skin. She knows that Chakashi would kill, and she understands why.

Whichever of them is the most persuasive, she is not quite sure, but Mole identifies the origin of the pot. Kida knows deep in her bones that it must return home, that it is yearning to be among its own. It is a pot, not a person, but still something thrums deep in it, a loss and a loneliness. She feels the urge to protect it, almost as strong as the pangs that run through her to protect Milo, and again is torn between marvelling at the strength of the aura of it and fearing what it could be used for, and what it could drive men to do.

 

 

 

 

 

They return the pot, trudging through the desert, and despite the crystal hanging at Milo’s neck Kida struggles not to fuss over him in the heat and the sun. They flee from the duststorm into the earth, and Kida feels awe overwhelm her when she sees the underground city that stretches out before them.

Milo speaks of cultures and places, but Kida can see Atlantis. In the great statues, in the stone houses, underlying and influencing and influenced but _there_ , and beautiful.

“Crystal Guardian was an Atlantean,” Milo says. “His teaching influenced all these cultures.”

How long ago had it been? A thousand years? More? She would have known him, whoever he was; she wonders what name he went by while he was in Atlantis, whether his face is among the hundreds in her memory, people that she has known, people that she thought lost to accidents or animals or despair.

Had it been distance from the crystal which killed him? Had he known, and chosen it, or had it snuck up on him over time? Would he have lived still, if the crystal had not been buried beneath the city? Or is she aging even now, beyond its reach?

She yearns to know his name, whether she had looked into his eyes, shared jokes at a fire with him. Whether she had fished with him in the water, or hunted in the tunnels. Whether they had been children together, whether he had been twice her age or half of it. So many of her people had been lost over the years that she cannot even be sure who it had been.

Crystal Guardian; it is a description, not a name. Her hand closes around the crystal at her throat, and tears prick her eyes. Only Milo follows her to look out over the great canyon, only his hand comes to rest on her back. Perhaps he understands it, a little.

Perhaps she only understands a little, as well.

He wraps his arms around her, and for once she is not the alpha, not the one protecting him. Alphas and omegas are meant to balance each other, to fit together like the earth and the air, each one supporting where the other is weak and yielding where the other is strong. They have found their roles in Atlantis, but on the surface it is different, and Kida can feel that she is not the same Queen here as she is beneath the ground. Milo kisses the back of her head, and her eyes blur with tears, seeing the influence of Atlantis flowing out like a drop of ink in a pool of water.

And there is beauty there.

 

 

 

 

 

It should not surprise her that the man named Carnaby tries to steal from the caves. Just as she is thinking that perhaps there is hope for Atlantis, that perhaps Atlantis can and should learn from these other cultures and allow them to learn from her in return, one man’s greed shows the danger that comes with any power, any beauty.

The gas overcomes them too quickly for her to even try to protect Milo, and Kida awakens bound and furious and humiliated. It has been many long, long years since anyone has been able to defeat her in a fight, and for all that she knows it is the technology of this world that is overwhelming her, that she does not understand, it does not do much to soothe her pride. She looked up desperately for her mate, to see him bound as well but looking more conscious and focused than she.

Carnaby mocks them, leaves, and in his wake they scramble to free themselves from. When Obby bites through Milo’s ropes, Audrey tells him to go to the dynamite, and it is a good thing too because all that Kida wants to tell him to do is _run_. Get away from this danger, from this insanity, protect himself and their child in his belly. Mercifully, Obby responds a little better to Atlantean than he does to English, and as soon as Kida has one hand free she draws the slender stone blade from her boot and can help him to free the rest of them. Milo shouts something, outside, but there is no time to think about it as all of them throw themselves from the cave just in time for an explosion to rock the air and dust to billow around them.

“ _Kida!_ ”

She hears Milo call her name, but when she breathes in to reply her mouth fills with dust. She looks up in time to see him push Milo to the floor, and it is only Sweet’s hand on her wrist that stops her from raising the knife, to throw or to attack she is not quite sure. Anger thrums in her bones, burns red in her vision, and part of her wonders distantly how she managed to maintain such anger for so many long, long years.

Before she can speak, though, before any of them save Sweet can speak, the mournful howl of a coyote carries through the air. Dust swirls around them, eyes gleaming red among its forms, and she can feel their fury but knows at the same time that it is not for her.

“What is this?” says Carnaby. She can hear the fear in his voice.

Milo’s reply is quiet. “Retribution.”

She steps forward, helping Milo to his feet and not hiding the way that her hand lingers on his abdomen as she draws him back. The coyotes swirl ever-thicker around Carnaby, until he is nothing but a shadow, until that shadow is distorted and consumed into nothing but glowing dust.

Only then, the coyotes surround them in turn.

It is Milo who walks through them, unafraid, to pick up the pot and place it in one of the hollow alcoves. As he returns to them, Kida places one hand on the small of his back, while the other still holds her obsidian knife.

Chakashi seems to form out of the dust as well. Kida feels Milo stiffen, but it does not surprise her as much. She remembers how it feels to slip in and out of magic.

“What happened to Carnaby?” she asks. She knows what she saw, knows as well that it is not the whole story.

Chakashi spreads his hand to the dust-formed coyotes around him. “He is with us now.” He looks them over. “You seem like good people. I am sorry. The secrets of the ancient ancestors must remain a secret.”

She wonders if he was human once, if he has become part of whatever magic is in this place. It echoes in her bones, makes her hyper-aware of the crystal through the shirt that she wears. Is he like her mother, claimed by the crystal? (As she so nearly was, as well.) Did he give himself over to it, to give the power a conduit that could walk among humans more easily?

They know so little about the crystal, even with the book that Milo brought back to them. But Kida does know, from eavesdropping and whispers that she was not supposed to hear in her youth, that before her father destroyed them, the other empires were searching for sources of power like it. Perhaps one speaks to them now, through Chakashi.

“You will not be allowed to leave,” Chakashi says.

His eyes glow red, and the dust swirls up around them. The dim howling of the coyotes begins again, like the mournful calls of a funeral.

“Chakashi,” says Kida, desperately, “we also carry a great secret. Thus, we can keep yours as well.”

She can almost feel the blood upon her hands again. Most of the intruders, she and her warband crept up upon while they were sleeping; time after time, they would kill them swiftly and silently, and destroy their possessions. But sometimes one would awake, or would not be sleeping at all, and she remembers how they begged. She has heard many reasons that someone should be allowed to live, and none ever swayed her. But she hoped Chakashi has more softness to him than used to be in her.

“What is this secret?” His expression does not change, but in a blink his eyes appear normal again. “Prove to me that it is as great as what you see around you.”

In nine thousand years, only a handful of outsiders have seen the city of Atlantis and lived. One, the writer of the journal that now rests safely at Whitmore’s house; the rest were Whitmore’s crew. Kida has killed men and women, alphas and betas and omegas all, to keep her city and her people safe. She had given up her life for Atlantis long before the power of the crystal flowed into her, the only way that it knew to do anything for the city.

She cannot tell him. Even for her life, even for the lives of the others, she cannot tell him.

“We can’t,” says Milo, softly.

Chakashi does not blink. “Very well. You have decided your fate.”

“Please!” Kida pushes forwards, dropping her knife to clatter on the ground. She splays her hand across Milo’s stomach, and feels the desperation in her voice. “There is an innocent among us. One who could not tell. Punish us for our knowledge, if you will, but not them.”

“Kida…” Milo breathes.

Chakashi’s eyes burn into her, and he does not need to state his reply. She never asked if there were innocents. She did what she needed to, in order to protect her people. Her heart sinks in her chest, and she wraps her arms around Milo as the dust gathers closer and closer. It whips their hair and plucks at her clothes, and Milo holds her tightly in return, and then a burning light gathers around them until she cannot see.

In an instant, it is over. The light of sunset is around them, and they stand beneath the open sky. Milo gasps, and draws away to look around, and though Kida’s arms ache to gather him up again she allows him to do so. She knows that they must speak, after this.

Chakashi stands before them, the coyotes now sitting peacefully at his side, and finally he smiles. “If you had told me your secret,” he says, “I would have known I couldn’t trust you with mine.”

“A trick question,” says Audrey, annoyance dripping from her tone.

“Must be the coyote in me.” Chakashi crosses to stand before her, eye-to-eye. “Kida of Atlantis,” he says, and she knows that she never spoke her homeland’s name but is not surprised to hear it from him, “you and I are not so different.” He takes her hand. “Your people touched the corners of the globe, teaching and healing, doing great good.”

When he removes his hand, the clay guardian is in her palm again. She clutches it to her chest without thinking, without breaking from his gaze.

“But they also did great _harm_ ,” she replies. “Almost destroying the world and themselves.”

The colours of the sky finally manage to draw her eyes away. She had never seen a sunset before coming to the surface, and she has never seen one this beautiful. The clouds look like lava in the strange, pink sky, and all the world is changed with light and shadows. She could watch ten thousand sunsets and never tire of them, and that is only a moment of a day. How many times could the power of Atlantis have destroyed this world, over and over, in nine thousand years? All that it would take would be one man like Carnaby, like Rourke, to tear everything apart. And she has lived more than long enough to know that for every man like Crystal Guardian, there will be one like Rourke.

Her eyes settle on Chakashi again. “My father feared the temptation to abuse our power would be too great.” Had known that it had been too great, even for him. “So he hid it away.”

She cradles the guardian to her chest. For all her years, she feels very alone, and very young, before Chakashi. Her home is far away, a land that people on the surface have never heard of or deride as a myth, and she feels ready to be neither Queen nor mother.

A hand tucks beneath her chin to raise her eyes again, and it has been a long time since she has felt this vulnerable. A long time, as well, since she has missed her father this much. “The secret you carry is neither good nor bad,” Chakashi says. “A strong leader must have the wisdom to know when to share that knowledge.”

“It would be wonderful if my people did not need to remain hidden,” she admitted. She can imagine them, feeling the sunlight, seeing a horizon, every moment something new and strange and wonderful to be discovered. But she knows that it is dangerous, to them and to the rest of this beautiful, incredible world. “To have them walk the surface of the world again.”

“It is your choice,” says Chakashi simply, and then he is gone, into a wisp on the air, and Kida’s heart is giddy and pounding in her chest.

 

 

 

 

 

“I was wondering when you were going to tell everyone,” says Sweet, once they have managed to make their way back to the car. This time Kida sits against the door, holding Milo against her despite his occasional half-hearted grumble. Sweet grins at them in the rear-view mirror. “Wanted to give you my congratulations, but didn’t want to be too obvious about it.”

“You _knew_?” says Audrey, looking at him in disbelief for far longer than Kida would like, even if they are on clear, open ground. She points at Milo in the mirror, before mercifully looking back to where they are going. “And you! You didn’t tell me!”

“Tell you what?” says Mole, looking up with a frown.

“We’re still sort of getting used to the idea,” Milo admits. He puts his hand on his stomach, and Kida takes it as permission to slide her hand in as well, interlacing her fingers with his. She kisses behind his ear, and breathes in the scent of him. Of course, she has been aware as long as he has, both of them quickly coming to realise from the changes in his scent and his body that he carried a child, but even after some three months of knowing it seems very knew. “Plus we… didn’t think we’d be on the surface this long. Didn’t think we’d be up here at all, really.”

“Pfft, I expect to be named godmother,” Audrey says. “Cause you know that Vinny is going to want to be a godfather, and someone’s gonna have to make sure the kid doesn’t just get explosives for presents.”

“My wife had a bit of a rough time with the twins,” says Sweet, “but of course, twins run in her family. That’s where I learnt how effective the ginger tea is. Honestly? I wish they taught more stuff like that in medical school. Learn as much from patients as you do from textbooks, you really do.”

“You have twins?” Milo raises his head from Kida’s shoulder. “Congratulations! How old are they?”

“Just turned two,” says Sweet, grinning. “Two healthy girls. I’ve got a picture in my wallet, give me just one second…”

“Now he’s started.” Audrey rolls her eyes. “I swear, I am the only person who likes children better when you can give them back to the parents afterwards…”

“Wait!” Mole’s head appears in the window to the back of the van, Obby beside him, and he peers down at Milo incredulously. “You mean Milo is pregnant?!”

Looks of exasperation turn in his direction. “Mole!”


	3. Chapter 3

The snow around Whitmore’s house still fascinates her, the way it crunches beneath her boots or feels beneath her fingers. The thunderstorm is more intriguing still, the dark clouds and the flashes of lightning through them, and she would have wished to watch it were it not for their strong desire to return to Atlantis. She needs time to think, to speak to Milo about everything that they have seen and learned, and decide whether she should lead her people away from the only home they have ever known in search of something more.

Milo’s hand slips into hers, and she smiles softly, suspecting what he is about to say. “Well, Mr. Whitmore, Kida and I had better be going, because–”

“Atlantis is waiting,” says Whitmore, softly. He pats Kida’s shoulder. “I know. Just as well.”

Kida gasps. “What?”

“Ah, we had a break-in last night.” Whitmore shrugs, sounding more annoyed than anything.

“Are you alright?” says Milo.

“Yes, I’m fine,” he says, waving it away. “But it burns me that someone could waltz right in here and steal something right off my wall.” Whitmore gives a sharp gesture to the empty gap, the brackets showing the shape of what was one there. “An ancient Norwegian spear.”

Theft is something that did still happen in Atlantis, something that Kida can understand. She listens as he describes the footprints, the lack of violence, the clear focus on one item. She agrees with Whitmore that whoever it was, they had wanted the spear, and only the spear, all along. But it is Milo who sports the scorched floor, black marks radiating on the stone like lightning marks.

“Mr. Whitmore,” says Milo, “I’m thinking that wasn’t any ordinary spear, was it?”

“Do I own anything that’s ordinary?” Whitmore rounds on Milo, who takes a step back, and before she can help herself Kida has strode to her mate’s side to stand protectively over him. But Whitmore does not even seem to notice, drawing back into his thoughts. “Regardless, I do have a good idea who took it.”

Erik Hellstrom, he explains. A business competitor who lost his money in some way that Kida does not quite understand or care for. Neither does she understand the words and references that Milo clearly does, gods and beliefs of this world, and finally _Ragnarok_ is one too many.

She puts her hand on Milo’s knee beneath the table. “What is Ragnarok?”

“Doomsday,” he says, “in the old Norse myths.”

 _Doom_ , at least, she recognises.

“But why would Hellstrom want the spear?” She can recognise the link between Norse and Norwegian, that is more than easy enough, but Milo has explained to her that spears are an old, old technology on the surface world. A spear might be protection against an animal or a man, but she does not see what it can do against a doomsday.

But Milo reaches for his pack, as he often does. “Seems to me, I remember something about a spear in the _Shepherd’s Journal_.” He pulls the book onto the table, with the same quick care that he always uses, and leafs through with intent eyes. So many times has he read the book, it never takes him long to find anything, and sure enough he is almost immediately brandishing a page, pointing to the spear drawn upon it. “I found it! _Gunokneer_.”

“Gesundheit,” says Mole.

“No, no,” says Milo, before even Kida can explain. “Gunokneer was the name of an Atlantean spear. The spear Hellstrom stole from Whitmore was the same spear – an Atlantean spear.”

“Weapons of Atlantis contain untold power,” says Kida. It is to Milo, and he of all of them already knows that, but she has to voice her fears all the same.

She remembers Gunokneer; it was made before the Fall, when Atlantis was at its most powerful and crystals could still be made, larger than the ones that they still now wear around their necks. She feels a stab of panic in her gut. It has become clear what their small crystals can do – mend rock, reform metal, heal wounds that should otherwise be fatal. But they know that the crystals can destroy rock and cut through metal, as well, and it is clear but never spoken that they are as capable of killing as they are of saving.

Gunokneer is as powerful as a dozen crystals, more than a dozen. It was made for war, for death and for destruction, and she thought that it had been destroyed millennia ago, at her father’s orders and her hands. She had shattered it into pieces, cast the crystal into molten rock and burned the staff, and had believed that it was done. But with what they have seen the crystals able to do, she can imagine only too well the lava carrying the crystal to the surface, the spear reforming under its own power. Solid lava and unskilled hands would have restrained the power of the crystal, for now at least, but the scorchmarks upon the floor suggest that restraint is no more.

She hopes that Milo will disagree with her, but his face falls.

“That’s an understatement,” he says, and turns to the book. She suspects that he would know the words without having to read them, but still his finger traces them along the page, too quick for her to quite follow. “At Ragnarok, the final night of the world, Odin will use the spear to summon the forces of death and destruction.” Milo swallows. “He’s going to use the spear to bring about Ragnarok.”

“ _Mabelmok_ ,” Kida whispers. The great flood, the great destruction. Any weapon powerful enough to destroy one of their enemies would have been powerful enough to destroy them as well. And in the wrong hands, Gunokneer would have been such a weapon, as portable as a spear but as powerful as the worst weapons they had ever produced. “The end of Atlantis. Of everything.”

She slumps back in her chair, and her hands shake beneath the table. Before the fall of Atlantis, there were nine Kings; she is the first Queen, but she never thought that she would also be the last. Just as her people are born again, and beginning to breathe, are they to be killed? Killed by the actions of their fathers, of _her_ father, dying for the sins of those who went before them? They have already lived their whole lives in darkness and decay, and now, just as hope is blooming, it seems that for making the weapons, and for failing to destroy them, it is all to be for nothing.

Her hand closes around her pendant. “Perhaps my father foresaw this.” Too late in his reign, to be sure, but eventually. He had realised the power and the danger.

“Your father was trying to save his _empire_ , Kida,” says Audrey. She jerks a thumb to the picture of Hellstrom on the screen. “This guy’s just frosted ‘cause he’s in the poor house.”

“So if Hellstrom is going to be stopped,” says Whitmore slowly, “looks like you’re going to Iceland.”

 

 

 

 

 

“You should not come,” says Kida, when she and Milo are alone to pack.

Milo stops, in the process of opening the wardrobe, and looks at her in disbelief. “Not come? Kida, I’m the only one of us who can read the Journal, I’m the one who found the reference to the spear. You need me with you.” He pulled out the heaviest of the coats, and threw it past her to the bed. “And you can’t stop me from coming.”

“I’m not saying you _can_ not,” she says, “just that you _should_ not. Milo…” she catches his hand, where he is about to take hold of another item of clothing, but he pulls away. “Milo, both Norway and America have already proven dangerous, and I can only imagine this will be more so.”

“And I’m not fit to come with you?” he asks, incredulously.

She can see anger in his cheeks, smell it radiating off him, and presses her lips together tightly. “No, Milo, you have proven yourself more than capable. But I cannot continue to endanger you, or our child, in this way.”

“I think I can make my own decisions about danger here.”

“If they were your decisions, I would agree, but it is not just you.” She gestures to his stomach. “Milo, it is not just our child, it is the heir to Atlantis. If something happens to me–”

“Nothing is going to happen to you–”

“Mabelmok is not something that can be shrugged off!”

“And I am not just some useless omega fit only for pumping out babies!” Milo shouts. She had not even realised that both of them had been gradually raising their voices until that moment.

With a deep breath, Milo turns away, one hand on his hip and the other running through his hair. In fifteen years, though their discussions have often turned passionate, they have rarely argued. Both of them might have fire in their nature, but they know it well enough and have learnt to largely restrain it. Certainly they do not shout at each other in their bedroom. Kida grits her teeth, clenches her fists, but forces her voice steady.

“I know,” she says. She has heard, over the years, his amazement at how _equally_ Atlantis treats its omegas, and though Audrey and Sweet and the others do not seem to mind, she saw Rourke and his clear disdain. More than that, she has seen how being treated as _less_ for his omega status has worn down on Milo, put ruts into his mind that still jolt him from time to time.

She sighs, and sits down on the bed.

“I am the one being the stereotype of an alpha,” she says. She clasps her hands in her lap, looks down at the floor, and in the corner of her vision sees Milo turn to face her. “I see my mate and my child, and I want them to be safe. In these last weeks I have seen you almost drown beneath the sea, fall from a cliff, be attacked by a sea monster, and be taken by a wind spirit and spared only because we answered a question correctly. And now, _Mabelmok_. I want to be able to fight this danger for you, whatever it might be. But…” she has always been able to be this sort of honest, with Milo, when with others she might not have lied but would often have kept such thoughts to herself. “I am thinking as well of my people. Of Atlantis.”

For a moment, silence hangs heavy in the room. “So am I, Kida,” says Milo, in his usual soft tones. He crosses to her and crouches down in front of her, taking both of her hands in his. “This might be the biggest danger we face – bigger than Rourke. But I know that we will have the best shot if we face it together.

“ _I can’t lose you_ ,” she says, slipping into Atlantean where she can make the _you_ plural.

Milo presses a kiss to her knuckles. “ _You won’t_ ,” he promises, in Atlantean as well.

She slides to the floor with him to kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth, and feels the prick of tears in her eyes. They will not have long before they have to be gone, she knows, not enough time to be tied together, but Milo’s hands still search out her skin beneath these foreign, heavy clothes, and when she wraps her hands around his waist she is not sure if it is her imagination that she feels a slight thickening there. But then Milo mouths against her neck, fumbling with her belt, and she reaches to do the same with shaking hands. At least one last time, she promises herself, and does not speak the words knowing that Milo will try to argue her away from such thoughts. At least one last time, she will know him.

 

 

 

 

 

They have to scramble to be washed, dressed and packed by the time that they pile into the plane, but somehow they manage it. The plane is very different to Atlantean flying machines, metal and enclosed, and it jostles against the wind as they fly north. She does not know enough about the weather on the surface to say for sure whether it is due to the spear or not, but Vinny’s scepticism does not fly with her.

“Relax, Mole,” Audrey is saying from upfront, as Mole continues the panicking he has done for most of the flight. “The land’s as solid as…” the silence hangs heavy in the air. “Uh, you’re gonna want to take a look at this.”

She and Milo unbuckle their seatbelts to look out, at the castle floating above its own mountaintop. Atlantis has flying machines, and the Crystal floats over their city day and night; it does not shock Kida as much as it clearly does the others.

“This is the power of the spear,” she says. A castle might be more than a flying machine, but she recognises it all the same.

They have to land. Kida is so focused on the castle that her heart leaps in her chest when the mountain itself rears up in front of them, into some huge creature shaped like a mockery of a Guardian. She grabs for Audrey’s chair for her own support, grabs at Milo for his, as Audrey desperately tries to wheel the plane around it. They escape, but suddenly there is ice on the plane and Audrey shouts at them to get back into their seats. She is the expert with machines, after all.

The plane careens downward, hits the snow, and slams to a halt in a snowbank. They climb from the machine unharmed, though Mole looks more than a little green around the gills, only for the ice creature to lumber out of the snow before them. Vinny fires some machine, removes the creature’s arm, only for it to grow back again in a whirl of ice and wind.

“Oh, great,” says Vinny. “More hocus-pocus.”

They flee through the snow, cold air almost burning, but cannot outrun a creature so huge. The next thing that Kida knows is a rush of cold that seems to freeze her bones, the floating feeling of power, and then the world turns a still, misted blue.

 

 

 

 

 

The ice around them fades, and they fall to the floor. Kida drags air into her aching lungs, and struggles to move stiff limbs to crawl besides Milo. She starts to breathe his name when she realises that a figure looms over them.

“I bid you welcome,” the man says, “to the Hall of Odin.”

She recognises Hellstrom from Whitmore’s pictures, for all that he is now strangely clad and has a patch over one eye. Milo tries to reason with him, to explain, but Hellstrom calls him by some name that Kida does not recognise and before any of them can react, pink-purple power shoots from the end of the spear and knocks Milo to the floor.

“Milo!” She throws herself to his side, even as he is already rising. He seems breathless, but unhurt, and looks straight back at Hellstrom even as she tries to turn him towards her. “Milo, look at me. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, without looking round. When she places a hand on his jaw and tries to turn his head, he slips into Atlantean. “ _We’re fine._ ”

Finally, she lets it be, and helps him rise all the way to his feet instead. He waves away the others, albeit with a shaking hand.

“Stop, Mr. Hellstrom!” Kida cries, then remembers what Whitmore had said the man believed. It has been many years since she dealt with one whose mind was so damaged as this, but she recalls the part that she had to play. “M- my lord, Odin,” she corrects herself.

Only then does he turn to face her. Her heart pounds in her chest, and she tries to be subtle as she slides in front of Milo but there is probably no subtlety to it at all. She feels so vulnerable in these surface clothes, no armour, no weapons, the man in front of her wielding without understanding one of the last great weapons from before the fall.

“I know the power of your spear,” she says. She walks towards him, calm, unthreatening, and offers the only words that she can think of that might draw him back. She does not know whether he has children, Whitmore did not say, but whatever passes everyone has parents, and learns eventually the pain of losing them. “The same power almost destroyed my father.”

“Father?” Hellstrom says, softly. He looks down at the spear in his hands, then peers closely at her. His scent is beta, but confused, unbalanced, as she has smelt sometimes on people in the depths of sickness. His eye widens with recognition. “Of course. Brunhilde, my daughter, my Valkyrie. You’ve come to rule the new world at my side.”

Part of her recoils, but she does not let it show on her face. Instead, she feels a rush of sadness and of sympathy, wonders whether Hellstrom has lost a child of his own. She knows that the surface countries have been entangled in a great war; it had begun before Milo even came to Atlantis, and in the time on the boat in the Northern Sea, Sweet had told Milo how it had ended. She knows that millions died, and wonders if Hellstrom had a child among them.

“No,” she says. She takes a step towards him.  “I am not your daughter… but I do care about you.”

As long as he holds the staff, as long as he and his life have been touched by the power of Atlantis and the crystal, she knows that some part of her will feel beholden to him. As if _he_ is one of _her_ children; for so long, Atlantis has been her mate and its people her children, and yet somehow Milo and their child still feel dangerously new and powerful in their hold over her.

He looks at her uncertainly, his expression softening for a moment, and she strikes. Snatching the spear from his hands, she leaps away, using it to vault over the large fire in the middle of the room. If she can grasp its power, feel for it, she can undo what Hellstrom has done. She turns, feeling the shaft of the spear grow warm beneath her touch, reaching out to her with old and powerful hands, but from nowhere Hellstrom’s wolf slams into her. She tries to keep hold of the spear, but a sharp pain slams through the back of her head as she hits the wall, and then there is blackness.

 

 

 

 

She awakes on a throne, in clothes she does not recognise, with her head still ringing and her tongue thick in her mouth. A bird cries out above her, and she looks up, before movement on the far side of the room catches her attention.

“You see?” Hellstrom says. “You are a warrior born, my Brunhilde, my daughter.”

She rises to her feet, strides straight towards him. In front of him, she will not use the crystal or reveal its power, not even as her vision swims, and she cannot restrain her anger now. Flattery did her no good before.

“I am _not_ your daughter.” She holds her fist to her chest. “I am Kidagakash, Queen of Atlantis. What have you done with my friends?”

“I cast them out, Brunhilde,” he replies, apparently unmoved by her anger and unhearing her words. His eye is glazed and glistening as he points to the floor with the spear. “Into the abyss below.”

“No!”

He knees give way beneath her, and she falls to the floor. It is for her friends, if _course_ it is for her friends, but it is the thought of Milo that rips her heart from her chest and turns her gut to lead. Milo, her mate, warm in her arms and excited as he talks about Atlantis and tentative as he first spoke to her; Milo, with their child in his belly and so much life left to live.

It is selfish to think why, when she has lost so much, she should lose more. But she cannot help it, cannot help the creeping bitter anger. All the same, it is only one more strike to her, only one more pain that she must bear, and for _them_ it is the loss and the nothingness. Her hands claw on the stone, until her fingertips turn white and pain jabs through them, and her breath comes ragged.

“It could not be helped,” Hellstrom says.

In that moment, she decides to kill him. What he has done until now – to steal the spear, to create the storm and the ice creature, to raise his castle up – could have been undone. But now he has crossed a line, and Kida knows a killer when she sees one, knows that the first kill is the hardest and that after that it becomes easier each time. Knows how easy it is, so long as you believe you are doing _the right thing_. And if it takes a monster to kill, then so be it; she has been that monster before, and will gladly be again. Milo’s tender touch against her stone heart is not there to stop her now.

She fixes her eyes on his back. There is a blade with the armour in which he has dressed her; she almost thinks him naïve, but no, it is not naivety but madness. As he turns to face her again, she takes another ragged breath.

“We must go, daughter,” he says. “The chaos lord of fire must be awoken before sundown.”

The stone behind him shifts, and her heart is in her throat as it rises up. Just a few inches, precious little, but enough for her to see Mole beneath, whole and well and without even a bruise or mark upon his face. He gives her a thumbs up, a grin, and she knows that must mean that they are all alive and well, hidden beneath the floor.

Her left hand strays to the bitemark upon her hip, his claim upon her. Perhaps she should have known.

“Yes.” Kida rises to her feet, as fast as her spinning head will allow her. “Let us leave. Quickly.”

 

 

 

 

 

It still pains her to take hold of Hellstrom’s shoulder; the others may be well, but it does not mean that he did not try to kill them. But whatever he has planned, she must allow him to leave in search of it, to give the others the chance to escape from the castle itself.

Hellstrom’s skill with the spear seems to have grown fast, and worryingly. Their flight down is steady, though the wind whips at them and bites at her skin. Usually a touch to the crystal at her throat would be enough to dissipate it, but she has seen evidence enough of Hellstrom’s knowledge without wanting to risk him learning more from her.

They land at the entrance to a cave system, and the cold gives way to waves of heat as Hellstrom leads them to pools of rippling lava. These, at least, Kida knows better than she does snow and ice.

“Hellstrom,” she says, more sternly than before, “you must listen to me. My father–”

“Yes?”

Anger flares within her; for all of his mistakes, her father had spent thousands of years making up for it, trying to protect his people. What had this man done, compare to that? It takes more effort than before to keep her voice calm.

“No, my _real_ father. He hid away this power so it could not be used for destruction.” Destruction all-too-easy to turn to, all-too-close to the surface in human nature. But all the same, she knew, they had kept the small crystals at their throats, used them for healing and for light and as a symbol of hope for nearly nine thousand years. “It was to be used for love, for life, for all that is good. Hellstrom, stop this madness, I beg you! Use this power to heal the world!”

“Brunhilde, that is exactly what I intend to do,” says Hellstrom, low and distant, and in her heart she knows that he does not even hear what she says. How he hears her words, she cannot say, but she knows it is not truly. “I, alone, am destined to remake it and rule over it anew. To begin again, I must destroy what is.”

She has seen the aftermath of such destruction. She has seen people crying for their dead and terrified in crumbling ruins. “No, you cannot.”

His gaze is straight through her. Her hand itches for the blade at her side; it will not be a weapon that she knows, but will be better than none at all, and for all that he can use the spear for some things she doubts that he knows one drop of its full potential.

“Kida!” Milo’s voice echoes down the corridor. They both look round, but Kida catches herself more quickly and grabs for the spear once again.

“You’ll not stop me, Loki!” Hellstrom shouts. He throws Kida aside again, and she would land on her feet but for the ridiculous long skirt that brings her crashing to the floor. She strikes her head, bites her tongue and spits out blood as she tries to push to her feet again and stumbles. “Lo! Ragnarok!”

And before she can stop him, he has turned the point of the spear to the pool of lava. Power crackles, light flares, and then a hissing, spitting creature of fire crawls from the surface of the lava and snarls hot air in their direction. A wave of its hand, and everyone throws themselves aside to avoid the molten rock that splatters on the ground.

Kida looks up, her vision swimming for a moment, then cutting sharply together as Hellstrom rises as well and points the spear towards Milo. He makes some threat, but she does not even hear the words over the roaring fury in her ears, the threat to her mate and to her child cutting through any semblance of thought.

She lunges for the spear again, wraps her hands around it. The power thrumming in it jolts in her hands, makes the crystal burn against her skin, but she holds on until Hellstrom wrenches it away with a bolt of power that burns in her bones. In a moment, Milo grabs the spear instead, and though the energy still crackles along it, it cannot lance through Milo’s thick leather gloves. Kida tries to reach in, but the end of the spear is waving erratically towards her, cutting so close that she can hear the whistle of the air and feel the hairs on her skin standing on end with the power of it, and instead she reaches for her blade.

Too late. The spear flies from both their hands, but before she can pounce upon it the fire-creature snatches it up and whirls past them in a scorching blaze. Milo grabs one of Hellstrom’s arms, and she takes the other, and even as he is talking about his victory it seems that the fight has gone from his body. He is all but a dead weight, and they must almost drag him out of the caves, to look down over the great plain where the two guardians of fire and ice now battle.

The sky boils with fire, and the land freezes. It is Milo who offers them the answer, as it always seems to be; he directs Vinny to pour down snow upon them, tear open the ground to unleash the lava, turning the two against each other in flurries of steam and with inhuman screams of pain and fury. The spear spirals from their hands, shrinking down as it lands within the snow, and this, _this_ , Kida knows how to react to.

She breaks from them, skids down the slope of ice as if it is a fallen pillar or a gravel slope, and snatches the spear from the icy ground. It fits in her hands as if it were made for them, in a heartbeat growing comfortably warm, and light glimmers in the large crystal as she raises it up. Looking up, she sees that Milo’s work has not distracted the creatures completely, as both turn on her and away from each other. A gasp tears from her lips.

The spear crackles blue-white in her hands, not the sickly purple that Hellstrom had drawn from it. Runes flare along its length, and Kida raises it over her head, feeling the giddy rush of power blazing through her mind until there is no room for thought, for feeling, nothing more than clear rushing bliss and brightness. The castle responds to the lightest touch of the power, swings through the air like a bubble on the water’s surface, and with a breath she releases it to fall upon both beings.

It is over. The power fades, and her body slumps weakly to the ground again. Milo calls her name and runs to her, his hands on her shoulders.

“I am all right, Milo,” she says, softly. She can hear the exhaustion in her own voice, cannot find the words to explain that she feels scoured-out and emptied and _free_ , that there is no pain that comes with the spear. He wraps his arms around her shoulders, and she can feel him shaking.

Hellstrom howls to the sky like a man who has been lost, and not saved.

“Let him mourn his Kingdom for a while,” says Milo. He helps Kida rise to her feet, though her knees still feel worryingly close to giving way again. “Then we’ll get him to a hospital… where maybe he can be helped.”

“And as for that thing,” says Vinny, pointing to the spear on which Kida now leans, “I’m thinking you should put it in a safe. Like, now.”

She looks at the spear, long and hard. Thinks of the Crystal in the hands of her father, and the destruction it had wrought; thinks of the Leviathan, and the Kraken mistaken for one of their war machines as well; thinks of Crystal Guardian, spreading his healing and his wisdom. Thinks of Atlantis, coming together again and being rebuilt. Thinks of Hellstrom, one man with too much power held in his hands.

Thinks of herself, ready to become a monster again when she thought Milo was gone. Of her years spent working for Atlantis, but never a part of it, never truly one of the people until she was their Queen.

Thinks of her and Milo’s child, thinks of all of the children of Atlantis yet to be born.

Like the moment when letters had started to make sense, when they had gone from meaningless shapes to words, the pattern falls into place around her. She breathes into it, and it swells and grows in her mind until she _knows_ , knows why there were once nine Kings and still a council to advise them, knows why she and Milo talk for hours, even if they disagree, even if the things they have assumed to be true have both been different and both been wrong. Thinks of alpha and omega, fitting together and complimenting each other.

Thinks of nine thousand years of loneliness.

“No,” she says, and smile. “I have a much better place for it.”

 

 

 

 

 

Her people gather outside the palace to see their Queen and Consort returned. It feels good to slip into Atlantean garb again, even if it is her formal, ceremonial robes, and to walk out proudly among them. Her heart is light in her chest, the spear is warm in her hand, and where once it had been heavy to wrench from Hellstrom’s grip, now it feels as if it weighs nothing at all.

Milo waits for her, in the centre of the plaza. This was where she had risen as the crystal, and been returned to her people again. Where she and Milo had been married. This time everyone, including Whitmore, is here to see what they have helped achieve.

“I learned many things from your world,” she tells Milo softly, as she joins him in the centre of her people again. She can feel the anxiousness of their gazes, so many people who have known these years of hope. To go back into darkness after knowing the light must be harder than having known it at all. “Most of all, I think I now know my father better.”

Her eyes drop to his abdomen, for a moment. She can see the slight change to his waist, but even almost bare-chested as he is, anyone who is not her will not be able to. For a moment she considers letting her hand linger on his side, but nothing has been announced yet; for all Audrey’s annoyance, Milo’s friends from the world above had still been the first to know.

Instead, she turns to her people, and raises her voice to them. “My father was only protecting us, and the world above, when he hid the world of Atlantis.” She takes a deep breath. For so long, her anger with her father had smouldered with her grief, but now though the grief bleeds anew, the anger is fading away. Though she still believes him wrong, she understands why a lonely King, losing his fellow rulers and his wife, would do such a thing. “I understand that now.”

There are gasps, some murmurs, and she knows where it sounds as if her words are leading. She draws breath to continue.

“Kida!” Milo bursts out. “You can’t hide the Crystal again! I mean, it would…”

She can’t help but glare.

“Oh. Sorry. Sort of ruining the moment there.” He clears his throat as she walks back over to him. “But–”

This time she hushes him with a hand to his lips. “But my father was wrong.” Again, she walks back towards her people, staying in motion, keeping their eyes upon her. “He thought mankind would use the power of the crystal for destruction. But look around you! The Heart of Atlantis has let us rebuild our city. And I have seen how the knowledge of Atlantis touched a whole tribe of surface people, and made them great teachers and healers.”

Her hands tighten on the shaft of the spear.

“The brightest light is worth nothing if hidden in a cave. I do not want the legacy of Atlantis to be the destruction of its civilisation.”

A pause, and for a moment her smile is just for Milo. That she will give their child a legacy of hope to build on, and not of destruction to fix. His hand goes to his own abdomen, but she doubts that anyone is watching, not as she raises the spear above her head and lets the power roll through it once again.

“Let us share our light with the world!”

She feels it again, the streaming rush, power blazing through her and the air beginning to whip around them. But this time she places the butt of the staff against the floor, watches the light spread around the city, and when its power lances upwards it meets with the Crystal above them. The Crystal that has loved and nurtured them for so long, that has kept them all alive and in a state of hope. That has been so much to them all.

The Guardians raise their arms. The shields spread out to form their arc around the city, but this time there is no panic, no lava beating hot against her mind as she feels the shields reaching out around her. Kida feels the brush of the crystal against her mind, but it is only welcome warmth, like a whisper of home and a murmur of voices, and she thinks that she hears her mother say, _‘Well done, Kida.’_

She releases the spear, and it stands alone, even as the rush of power and strength leaves her again. Her feet stumble, and she wavers, but Milo is there as he always has been and this time her strength returns to her more quickly as she looks up to the blazing crystal, watching as the light of the spear melds with it until the spear is gone, its power of destruction finally defeated and no more.

The city rumbles, stones rattling beneath their feet, then lifts from the ground in a judder of rock. The rock ceiling above them parts for the passing of the shields, reforms beneath their feet, all of the spear’s terrible power eaten up and changed into something beautiful. It began to spread, the realisation of just what Kida had meant, and laughter and shouting broke out among her people as Milo held her close and rested his forehead to hers.

Her father, alone and isolated, had hidden the Crystal away because he no longer trusted himself. Kida knew that she was not flawless either, nor blameless, that she had killed without mercy those who sought Atlantis out of curiosity and not cruelty. But no man was meant to stand alone, no King or Queen, no kingdom. Alone and in the dark, Atlantis had remained in danger of returning to its insular, bitter ways; among the world, sharing what they knew, they would be part of a far greater place that could benefit them all.

Rock gives way to water, and the water grows brighter and brighter above them.

“You did it,” Milo whispers.

“No,” replies Kida. “We did it.”

She is not sure if he wholly understands, but his smile says that he understands enough, and they peel apart to look above them as the sea parts and light beams down upon the city. Stone that has not seen sunlight in nine thousand years, plants that have never seen it at all, are exposed to bright blue skies and the shining sun, and Kida feels it paint warm down her skin. People shield their eyes, or shout in wonder.

“What is that light, Queen Kida?” says Karadekh. She is all of five years old, and Kida remembers her birth, remembers every birth that has happened since the return of the Crystal. Every person who will grow up in its light, and not know the terrible darkness. “Is it a Crystal?”

“No, child.” Kida smiles, and scoops Karadekh up. She would never have done this fifteen years ago, would have protected her people but never allowed herself to be this soft to them.  Only in the years since has she learned those skills. “It is the _sun_.”

Milo tugs her over and kisses her on the cheek; Karadekh sniggers, as children will. “Do we tell them?” he murmurs, leaning so close that her arm brushed against his abdomen.

Her eyes skim the people around them, shielding their eyes for all the years they have had with the Crystal giving them something like normal light, breathing in the smell of the sea air, pointing at clouds and birds and an unfortunate fishing ship whose occupants are probably more than a little confused already. “Not yet,” she says softly. “Let them get used to this first.”

He chuckles. “That could take a while.”

“You’d be surprised.” For all of their years in the darkness, Atlanteans do know how to adapt. Kida lets Karadakh slide from her arms, and nudges her towards her parents. “You will have a lot of new names for fish to teach them, I expect.”

Milo slides an arm around her waist, and at least it will not draw attention when she does the same in return. “I think I can handle that.”

She presses a kiss to his shoulder. This will be his legacy as well, perhaps more even than it will be hers. Atlantis will never stand alone again, and finally there is no limit to the world which they can leave their children.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who has seen the second film: yes, when Kida finds out about the 'rudder' incident, someone is going to get into significant trouble.
> 
> I'm pretty sure the little girl at the end has a canon name, but I can't find it now. The name Karadekh is taken from _Atlantis: A Traveler's Guide to the Lost City_ from Disney Editions.


End file.
